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In Spain, welfare has historically incorporated some of the most characteristic features of the continental 'conservative corporatist' model of social policy (Esping-Andersen, 1990). In the last two decades, an incrementalist pattern has developed concerning welfare services and income policies alongside some inherited corporatist practices --despotic and democratic-- from both late Francoism and the transitional period to democracy (1976-79), respectively. Spain has reconstructed a medium-size system of social protection as compared to the countries of the European Union. At present the Spanish Welfare State represents a fundamental structure for both social reproduction and political legitimisation. Since its accession to the European Community (1986), Spain has followed a pattern of convergence in welfare of a three-fold nature: a universalisation of social entitlements (education, health, pensions); a confluence of welfare spending to the median of its European partners; and a diversification in the provision of social services by private and subsidised organisations. Thus, the Spanish Welfare State can be labelled as a via media with respect to other existing welfare systems (Moreno & Sarasa, 1992, 1993). Indeed, the welfare system in Spain incorporates elements of both Bismarckian and Beveridgean traditions, or rather between bread-winner 'continental' and citizenship-centred 'liberal' models. It also represents a middle way of de-commodification and gendering, and of universal and means-tested access to services and benefits. Policies carried out according to targeting criteria have had a 'ripple effect' upon worse-off categories expanding the 'grey zones' between both social insurance and welfare assistance realms. In Spain, liberalisation in the provision of welfare services is noticeable in a certain extension of free-market morals and, thus, in the proliferation of 'non-profit' -but characteristically subsidised-NGOs, and the reinforcement of the process of welfare privatisation. However, a trend away from 'residualism' and a parallel growth of institutional 'stateness', or state penetration of the welfare sphere (Flora, 1986/87; Kuhnle, 1997), can be also detected. In fact some reforms of universalisation (education, health pensions) have been put into effect in recent years encompassing some basic entitlements with traditional income related programmes. |
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